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Hi knuckleheadA community developer may choose to base it on the previous final/stable release by setting that in their code and foregoing new CoreRPG features until they are ready to update their ruleset.

The primary issue with this is there is code in the ruleset, code in CoreRPG and code in the application. Changes to the Application code are also going to break these previous versions.

Yeah, that's what I was suggesting, the CoreRPG version the ruleset is built on, only until it's confirmed to work with the new one, in which case it's "frozen" til it's confirmed working.

This all falls to pieces if the engine api never guarantees anything to CoreRPG, because then CoreRPG versions mean almost nothing to ruleset developers, so versions should simply be "Current" or "Broken" to reflect their potential for producing a working ruleset.

I really, REALLY like that idea presented somewhere here that mentioned using version control, though. Imagine an embedded versioning system (at least where text files are, anyway, binary assets would be a problem) where you could roll back to any stable/compatible release, and corerpg just had different branches storing the diffs rather than a hundred billion ruleset folders? At least the images/versions that were still compatible with the engine.

Still, rulesets/mods/exts are archived themselves, so I'll bet there are headaches involved with having the unzipped versions sitting there taking precedence when an updated, zipped version is installed.

Anyway, not saying it's easy, and probably not introducing any new ideas that weren't mentioned elsewhere I guess, just making a suggestion for the mental health of everyone involved from SW on down to the guy who is like "OMG I can maybe possibly finally run/play GURPS and abstract away just the tiniest fraction of the rules so I can convince others to play"

Whether it's viable or not is left the the people who know what's going on (and who aren't too entrenched in their mastery of an existing system to fairly analyze an alternative system, but I'm assuming the overwhelming majority of people here already take that rational view)

I think everyone who has written a ruleset or an extension here wishes there was a way to not have to maintain it every update.
I cant speak for SmiteWorks but I think at the end of the day this issue simply isnt as important as other items on their list so until it is it wont get any traction.
Even more likely is I think that they only want to have the one engine and one CoreRPG as they would still have to do some support and some maintenance for all those earlier versions.

I think some of your lighting wishes are much more likely to get actioned than this one.

...
We agree, though, I want whats easiest for everybody, and I made a suggestion that I thought would do that.

I put more value on what's easiest for the folks already out there bringing in new functionality right now, compared to theoretical unknown future entities, who can only be enticed to participate by a guarantee of puppy dogs and ice cream.

"Mini sheets" are a reference to something that existed in the old GURPS ruleset. There were a couple of buttons on the character sheet that would pop up "mini sheets," one for the basic combat stats like HP & FP, and another for DR/defenses, IIRC. The nice thing about them was that they were separate from the character sheet when opened, so they could stay open as you flipped from page to page, and could be moved elsewhere on the desktop.

It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.

"Mini sheets" are a reference to something that existed in the old GURPS ruleset. There were a couple of buttons on the character sheet that would pop up "mini sheets," one for the basic combat stats like HP & FP, and another for DR/defenses, IIRC. The nice thing about them was that they were separate from the character sheet when opened, so they could stay open as you flipped from page to page, and could be moved elsewhere on the desktop.

The Savage Worlds ruleset for Fantasy Grounds has this very thing and they are useful. Screen real estate is always scarce.

I'm just a little fancier about it - I use subversion with version tags, so I can just go into a ruleset folder, and tell subversion "use version XXX of this ruleset" and it updates all the files accordingly.